When looking into a case for your shiny new iPhone 5, you’ve probably looked at the usual suspects: an Otterbox for defense, a cheap knockoff on eBay for bare bones, an arm band for running. You might not have looked at ones made of rice.
No, we’re not talking in some sort of “refined rice as a plastic” case that’s ecologically friendly, although that wouldn’t surprise anyone.
RocketNews 24 reports that the Survival Senbei iPhone 5 Case has been announced. Made entirely out of Japanese brown rice and salt, the case takes the form of a “senbei”, a Japanese rice cracker. The item is designed to be eaten in a pinch, but naturally works more out to be a novelty due to it’s fragile nature. In fact, the creator, middle-aged Mariko, notes that the case has a 1-in-10 chance of being broken upon arrival. For 3818 yen (loosely around $40), most cases are expected to take a few hits before a scuff; dropping it and the case shattering is just not a good start.
Still, if the case DOES break, you can eat it. I don’t know how much you might want to eat something that’s been sitting in your dusty, lint-filled pocket, but in case of an emergency (a survival emergency, as the name denotes), you may just need a bit of brown rice to get you by.